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There's a lot I love about this; the idea that the UK's anti-Cthulhu agency is just as bureaucratic, chaotic and affected by poor privatization efforts as any other government agency, Ahnenerbe mischief that's given enough weight, the technical application of magic, the idea that it's all really just tech support in the end... Of course, that also means we have a narrator who's as smugly superior as any other public-sector IT support guy, and enough technobabble to make a Doctor Who fan zone out. Not sure I'll bother with the rest of the series, but if I find vol 2 for cheap I might just pick it up.

3.5/5, a solid 4/5 if you're specifically looking for Sonic Youth info. Kim Gordon is not a bad writer, and if she's no Patti Smith, that's ... well, who is. Girl In A Band is a good memoir, but doesn't frequently rise above "Here's what happened to me specifically" into saying something more about the scene, about music, about art. It happens enough to make it worthwhile, and as a fan I lap up all the personal stuff too, but...

I was lucky enough to see SY several times. I saw 71-year-old Kim Gordon play solo last year and it was one of the best shows I've been to in years, closer to the anti-rock scene SY sprang from than anything they'd done since the mid-80s while sounding nothing like them. I kind of wish that's the Kim who wrote this, someone who'd moved on and become a vibrant creative musician again, rather than a newly-divorced Kim looking to set the record straight.

- A bear! You made a bear!
- I didn't mean to...
- UNDO IT! UNDO IT!

Shardik is a bit of a mixed bag; conceptually often brilliant, projecting fanaticism onto a beast (?) who knows nothing but that he'd like the tiny monkeys to stop stabbing him please, and following it through all the various stages of the political implementation of it. Adams does some fine building here of both world and characters, with consequences that feel, if not always completely realistic, then at least like they have weight. But the narrative is a bit too messy, and the prose a bit too filigreed, for me to love it as fully as I love Watership Down.

Det finns så mycket att älska med den här boken. Hur den skissar människoöden genom århundradena, hur den försöker fånga det där mystiska konceptet "hem" och vad det betyder, hur den verkligen luktar både mossa och kärr och furuved, hur den hakar ihop allt på slutet så att man bara måste återvända direkt till början igen...

Not my favourite White, but a fascinating concept; The Martian on the ocean floor, kind of. Some of the character work feels a bit dated, and as in All Judgment Fled I kind of wish he'd given himself 20 more pages to relax a bit into the story. But I do really like his optimism here. We could use a bit more of that.

Det är 775, och hela Västeuropa ligger under Karl den store. Hela? Nej, ett litet gäng med tappra langobarder håller ut och tänker göra uppror! ...Detta slutar inte väl för dem. Där börjar historien. Eller historian.

Precis som i hans andra historiska romaner lever Hans nådes tid i två tidsramar; i brytningen mellan senantik och medeltid, mellan folkvandring och kejsardömen... men också i Johnsons eget 1900-tal; om Strändernas svall var att komma hem efter ett krig som slitit sönder världen handlar det här om att leva under den sortens ledare som vinner krig och bygger imperier. Den eviga paranoian där varje ord kan göra dig till en ickeperson, där du måste hålla koll på vem som är en sann vän och vem som är en angivare, där lismare flyter till toppen och ingen frågar efter dem som släpas bort utan rättegång.

Fan vilken tur att vi kommit bort från det nu...

So it's a direct sequel to an 1818 novel, possibly set in the 21st century, with both prose, technology and characterization borrowed straight from the early 20th century, and published in the late 70s.

So yeah, I really just think Glut is having fun here. Both with the effort of squaring Shelley's version of the story with Whale's, with the prose that's so purple it's practically ultraviolet, and with the characters, whether they're evil savages, lederhosen-wearing Germans, or women so beautiful they literally curse their tight-fitting cutoff jean shorts for making it difficult to run away from danger. It would be pretty offensive if it wasn't written with just enough self-aware glee.

Is it good? Probably not. The fact that he spends so much time and effort resurrecting Shelley's original, erudite Creature only to have a hypnotist immediately turn him into Whale's dumb brute is a bit disappointing. But hey, it's a yarn, and I have part 2 on the shelf.

She will understand, I'm sure of it, because all women hide a black notebook, a forbidden notebook. ... Now I wonder where I've been more honest, in these pages or in my actions, the ones that will form an image of me, a beautiful portrait.

4.5. OK, I'm a sucker for a good meta-Hamlet. And Enter Ghost is often a brilliant novel, hitting that sweet spot of good character work and exploring wider identities - what is a Palestinian, what is an actor, the way oppression forces everyone to perform at all times; the roles are already written, the question is just who the circumstances will force into which role. Nay, I know not "seems". All while the pressure keeps building outside the safety that the castle or the stage offers.

So for long stretches, this is a pure 5-star for me. Two things bring it down ever so slightly; the ending, which feels both perfect and incredibly frustrating; and the feeling that this 2023 novel is already outdated, its questions made obsolete by a real world that is content to let not just Rosencrantz & Guildenstern die offstage. It can't help the latter, obviously.

Skin. It's skin.

We had "strayed", as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us.

Brilliant little cosmic horror piece, set not in an occult New England university or an ageless mysterious city but just at a campsite in a spot that seems... thin. Where the old-growth trees don't grow the way they should. Where two people realise that they have to leave, but can't. Where they can't even put words to it for fear of giving it power. Damnit, I have to read more Blackwood.

3.5/5. Feels very much like a riff on Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will. Which is in no way a bad influence, and in fact I picked it up because someone said anyone who liked Schalansky's book will like this. And I do, for the most part; it ought to be a solid 4 with its mix of stories about the people who built, kept, and were saved (or not) by them, and the way it takes you around some of the remotest areas on the planet.

There's just a little something missing for me. The personal connection from Schalansky's book, the dreaming. Macías, at the end of it all, seems pretty content to never get to go to these places, and who could blame him, really.